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Supreme Court on banning of pornographic websites

Last week, Honorable Supreme Court of India had constituted a committee to explore technical solutions that can help block obscene websites and otherwise restrict the circulation of obscene videos/websites freely. The committee consists of representatives of Microsoft India, Yahoo India, Facebook and others, which have been provided 15 days time to come up with concrete solution.

Last year government had ordered for blocking of 857 websites for the same reasons but soon they were unblocked and now are available to access. Just after a month of unblocking of website order, a women lawyers’ body moved the Supreme Court seeking blocking of all porn websites as it claimed that pornography “corrupts” the mind of the young generation and leads them to commit crime against women and children. It also sought formulation of a national policy on the issue of pornography, framing of guidelines and initiation of strict measures to curb the growing of issue of child pornography.

There are many technical challenges and otherwise also rarely any such material originates from India or even Asia but mostly from America and Europe. Though, the circulation and/or publication of the same has been claimed to have physiological and far reaching effects. Based upon these grounds, a petition was filed before the court in 2013 also by Advocate Kamlesh Vaswani (in the matter of Kamlesh Vaswani v. Union of India & Ors.). Later some videos of rape were circulated, against which one more petition was filed in 2015 by the victim.